weiRd And wondeRfuL shApes 69
each other’s capabilities,” McCurdy says, “so it was sort of a breakthrough.”
Not that they actually liked one another, Foster makes clear.
To end the stalemate over the Seattle-King County legislative districts,
Gorton surrendered any claim to having a corner on piety. He offered
Greive “a weird bird-shaped district, with a major Republican stronghold
in the beak and a scattering of Democratic outposts in the body.” Greive,
a connoisseur of gerrymandering, couldn’t help but admire Gorton’s
handiwork. They both laughed at their machinations.
There were five final obstacles to a compromise. One was Gorton’s
proposed new 21st District, fashioned from the growing suburbs between
Seattle and Everett. Gorton and Evans insisted on protecting their favorite
Democrat—Jack Dootson of Everett—by moving one of the three Demo-
cratic incumbents in his area to the new 21st. Otherwise, Jack was toast.
“Jack Dootson was the most memorable character I have ever known in
politics,” Gorton says emphatically. In the throes of the 1963 redistricting
debate, when the Democrats presented their alternative to Gorton’s bill,
Dootson had stood to be recognized from his back row seat: “Mr. Speaker,
I have examined the two bills before us. I think Representative Gorton’s
bill is much more objective than my party’s bill and therefore I’m going to
vote for it.”^8 Democrats exploded in outrage. Dootson was unfazed. What
happened two years later is one of Gorton’s favorite stories. He tells it mas-
terfully, pausing every few paragraphs to shake his head and grin because
mere words fail to sum up how inimitable Dootson was:
“A boyhood friend of Scoop Jackson when they were growing up in
Everett, Jack Dootson was first elected to the Legislature in 1940 as a
member of the left-wing Washington Commonwealth Federation. He
was a switch engine engineer in the Great Northern lumber yards in Ev-
erett. He served one session in the House in 1941, then went into the Navy
and got all the way to lieutenant commander during World War II be-
cause he had four university degrees. After the war, he returned to the
switch engine job, got elected to the Legislature once more, then lost. His
Everett district had one senator and three representatives under the old
gerrymandered system. So every now and then Jack would finish third in
the Democratic primary and get elected again. He came back to the House
as a result of the 1962 election. Jack was still a wild left-wing social liberal
but also a huge right-wing fiscal conservative. He had two suits—1940s
zoot suits, with wide lapels and baggy pants. He never threw away a piece
of paper. You almost couldn’t see him behind his desk, way in the back far
end of the Democratic side in the House. He stopped going to the Demo-